Apologies for being a day late on getting this posted. Mondays during the summer are CRAZY at work. Ok, the rest of the week isn’t much better, but Mondays especially I am playing catchup from the weekend.

This week’s Laid Back Raid hosted by JD at Amateur Azerothian was Karazhan and Grul’s Lair. Kara is quite possibly my favorite place in all of Azeroth. As JD mentioned in his post, we had quite a nice turnout this week, too! His pics are better than mine but I took it so I’m posting it.

I got to meet some people I hadn’t met before this time! That’s Navimie on the left of course, then the two elves to her left are Cymre and Coolidge. I know Arv had hung with them before, but this was my first time, so it was pretty exciting.

I wasn’t really in the mood to paladin, but when I looked at Van’s rep and saw I was at 15k/21k to exalted with the Violet Eye I knew I had to get it. It didn’t take long, and I got 30 Exalted Rep as a bonus, which I hadn’t realized I was that close to getting. It was also on Shade of Aran, which was my very favorite fight at-level when you actually had to pay attention to his mechanics.

Adoe and Painsaw (Moogik’s gobby warrior) joined up for Grul. Then afterwards and with some shuffling of characters because some people needed to leave, we also hit up Magtheridon and Tempest Keep. I made Arv join up for Tempest Keep … you can never have too many paladins after all! Twice in TK I got mind controlled and killed Moog. Well, I DID warn him that I like to hear male goblins die. Now he knows what he’s in for if he ends up raiding on that character in MoP. *giggle*

In this shot we have Arvash, Kamalia (sorry I don’t remember the actual character’s name), Cymre, me, Painsaw, and Coolidge.

Next week is Alliance Onyxia on Saturday. Too bad, Van has never killed her. But I have plenty of Alliance who haven’t been there, too. :)

Apologies to my SR buddies. I know, I know. I sent a scroll of resurrection to a former member of our Horde team, it would make sense to redeem the mount for the Horde version. But I really prefer the look of the spectral gryphon to that of the spectral windrider.

And hovering:

Then I got *really* crazy and queued for a healer call to arms satchel. As soon as I hit the button I started praying to get Hour of Twilight. I breathed a sigh of relief when I saw the loading screen. It was a nice group, too, with a hunter, mage, warrior, and a bear tank. All I got was an ember topaz but that’s ok.

So, this weekend I went to visit Slice and Lyssi. Sorak was in the same state they are in on business, so I swung by and picked him up on my way there.

We got there Friday late afternoon, and we all piled into Slice’s car and went to Quaker Steak & Lube for wings. Sorak ordered some Atomic level stuff that no one else would touch. Friday night a few of Slice’s friends came over. First they taught me how to play Magic in preparation for Saturday night’s draft, then we all played another card game called Bang! that Sorak brought with him. Oh yeah, and we had these awesome enchiladas for dinner that Lyssi cooked.

Saturday morning Lyssi cooked breakfast for us, and we watched some netflix … then we decided we’d better get moving if we wanted to go to the zoo. Compared to our zoo here, the one in Columbus is huge. We were there four hours and didn’t see everything. But what we did see was pretty cool. Here are some of the things we saw:

Druid Tank (Brown Bear)

Hunter Tank Pet (Black Rhino)

Future MoP mounts! (Red-naped Crane)

Wild Asians (Slice and Sorak)

Puma

Cougar

Koala

Other Koala!

A bat at one of the flight paths in Forsaken territory (Large Flying Fox)

It was pretty hot and humid. It had looked like rain, but then the sun came out. Bleh. So we spent a lot of time in line to refill our drinks, like Lyssi and Slice are doing here.

It was a lot of walking too, so Slice and I sat down whenever we could.

Not sure how much fun the boys really had, but Lyssi and I really enjoyed seeing all the animals.

Wow this is getting long already. Anyway, the coolest part at the zoo was Stingray Bay, where you can stick your hands in the pool and actually touch the stingrays. It wasn’t the best spot to get pictures though.

After the zoo we grabbed a bite to eat, then went to the home of the guy who came over the night before for our Magic tournament. I had no help at all on the drafting part, and I must have done ok, because they said my deck was pretty solid. I did have advice on what plays to make for the first two matches though.